Hello, people! Sorry that I forgot to write this in my last post, but if you EVER see what you believe to be a falsity in what I’m writing, please tell me. In all seriousness, if it is an error in theology or biblical terms, it would be horrible if the lies would spread to the other person who reads this blog. If it is something else, I’m always up for a hearty debate. Well, that it from me. Let’s get started.

Humans get angry at a lot of things. For my dad, it is getting interupted in the middle of a sentence. For my sister, it is whenever we step out of line and embaress her (e.g. bursting out singing in public). For me it is when the bus gets full, so you stand up in an out of the way place and when the person steps in the bus, he doesn’t take a seat, but stands in the isleway and skillfully blockades everybody from getting to your seat, so all stand awkwardly, peering over his shoulder at the seat where they really want to get their body resting, but that dimwit still hasn’t noticed the dozen and then ten more people get out, he doesn’t budge and now there are eleven empty seats and AAARRRGGG!

Now you may be saying: “Hey Ben, What an unlikely event to ever happen.” It isn’t. But that’s not the point of this article. Today, we are going to fully investigate anger.

Let’s start with the definition. According to bing, anger is: “A strong feeling of annoyance, displeasure, or hostility.” And who doesn’t experience that from time to time? Many of us wouldn’t exactly call ourselves hot heads, but this world is pretty damaged. Aside from those who want to kill others, there are bullies, times where your siblings or friends get on your nerves, parents, teachers… Why is it so bad for us to get angry? Everyone gets angry. But that’s not how we are to live. As God’s precious children, as his people, god has given us the humungous privellege to please him and do his work. So if anger is a sin, we should be doing everything we can to get rid of it (of course we can’t do anything without god’s help. Please, weed out our sin, Father, Lord)

But did Jesus ever get angry?

The gospels mention it twice, I think: Matthew 21 and Mark 3.

Those were the only ones I could find. That really isn’t much, considering that there were four biographies of Jesus life written in the bible. If you’d have one thirty chapter book, how often would it mention your anger? Since Jesus was a perfect man, the anger he had could not have been a sin. But at the same time, Jesus said this:

“But I tell you that anyone who is angry with a brother or sister, will be subject to judgment. Again, anyone who says to a brother or sister, ‘ Raca,’ is answerable to the court. And anyone who says, ‘You fool!’ will be in danger of the fire of hell.” Matthew‬ ‭5:22‬ ‭NIV‬‬.

So clearly, some anger is a sin and some anger isn’t.

So what is the difference between sinful anger and righteous anger?

Righteous anger

Let’s open our bibles to the passages, where it talks about Jesus’ anger. See what he gets angry about:

When Jesus is in the temple, he sees people who don’t fear god one bit, misusing the place god, the almightly, alljust and allloving being, decided to dwell and spend time with his people (how great that is!), but only care about themselves and them recieving earthly treasures.

When Jesus came and healed a man, while the pharisees stubbornly only cared about finding Jesus doing something wrong.

Both of these passages have something in common: Jesus hates sin. This is makes uttermost sense: Have a look at god in the old testament and you’ll see straight away the one problem that stood between god and man: sin. Over and over again in the prophetic books he comdemned sin.

This is where one of god’s great characteristics is displayed. Justice. Although our sinful hearts don’t like it, think about how horrible everything would be without it. So having anger at sin can be a great thing (although in most cases, it is probably not best to shout at your best friend for lying)

Now let’s look at the places where Jesus DIDN’T get angry (warning, there’s a lot):

– When his disciples were having a meltdown in the storm on the lake, although they knew that Jesus was powerful (Matt. 8)

– When on the other side of the lake, Jesus drove out demons, but the people of the town begged for him to leave (Matt. 8)

– When everyone laughed at Jesus for saying that the girl was asleep (Matt. 9)

– When they called Jesus, who is god, SATAN (Matt. 12)

– When they kept on asking Jesus for a sign, although by then he had done thousands of miracles in front of them (Matt. 12)

– When the people in his hometown wouldn’t believe what he said because they saw him growing up (Matt. 13)

You get the point. Jesus’ patience was impressive. He would put up with annoyance after annoyance, but not lash out. Let’s have a look at

Sinful anger

Sin is disobedience to god, so when we’re in sinful anger, we are rebelling against god. This can pop up for many reasons. It could be impatience of our sister singing the same chorus of a song for the twentieth time. It could be pride or greed when you receive a low mark from a teacher. It could be envy for your friend who has a better sister and a better teacher. Whatever the cause is, if it isn’t righteous anger, it’s sinful. This anger is the reason Cain killed Abel, Abram and Lot were forced to seperate. This anger has consequences. It makes people hate, harm or slander the victim.

So how can we fight anger and hatred? Let’s look at proverbs 10 verse 12: “Hatred stirs up conflict, but love covers over all wrongs”. This sums it up perfectly. Has your little brother been a pain in the neck? Love him by putting up with him and patiently spend time with him. Your dad getting a bit annoyed at you? Lovingly talk to him about that sin and forgive him completely. Love isn’t easy, but god has always loved. In the upcoming day, week, year… please ask god to teach you to not get angry at your fellow humans surrounding you, but to give you a lot of love for the people around you.

Your brother, Ben